Install IOS 6.1 on an iPad2?

[Fardringle]

My wife has a 16GB iPad2 (wireless only) and it keeps pestering her to install IOS6. She has been avoiding that because of the map issues and other problems in 6.0.0, the wireless problems in 6.0.1, and battery problems in 6.0.2.

I haven't been able to find many actual user reviews for IOS 6.1 yet so I'm curious if any of you have personal experience with it on an iPad2. Have the wireless and battery issues been fixed? And are there any new problems she should be aware of before she installs the upgrade?

 

[lopri]

Can you go back if you don't like it? I have never tried it when I had iDevices around. I still have quite a few in my household but they're not exactly mine.

 

[Eug]

What wireless issues? What battery issues? I am assuming they do exist, but we never encountered them. Anyways, my iPad 2 is on 6.1 and it's fine.

I don't use Apple Maps though.

And no, generally you can't go back once you've upgraded.

 

[Ravynmagi]

I'm on 6.1 (not sure how long it's been on there). I haven't had any problems. But I also never had any problems with 6.0, 6.0.1, or 6.0.2. My wifi, bluetooth, and battery have all worked fine. I don't use maps on my iPad.

Using an iPad 4 by the way.

 

[Fardringle]

There are MANY reports all over the web of extremely poor wireless reception and frequent disconnects with 6.0.1. click me

And 6.0.2 (which was supposed to fix the wireless issues but didn't) caused battery life to drop to well below 1/2 of what it was previously for quite a few people on many different devices. click me too

It doesn't happen to everyone, of course, but the fact that it's very difficult to roll back the IOS version makes her hesitant to take the chance.

 

[Eug]

Those links don't go anywhere for me.

Anyways, I've never encountered any of those problems with my iPad 2 in 6.0, so I didn't hesitate to upgrade to 6.1, and that works fine too. YMMV.

BTW, side note: While performance of 6.x is fine on iPad 2, it seems to slow down the iPhone 4.

 

[Fardringle]

I appreciate the feedback. It's nice to see that at least some people are running IOS6 without problems. I don't know that she really "needs" to upgrade since the one thing she really wants - Siri - doesn't work on the iPad2 even with IOS6, but she does want to get iTunes and the tablet to stop reminding her about it multiple times every day.

I don't know why the links wouldn't work. They work OK for me, but then, they were my own searches. Google search for "ipad 2 battery problems with ios 6" and "ipad 2 wireless problems with ios 6".

 

[Eug]

It should be noted that we have an Airport Extreme wireless router. Considering it's an Apple product, perhaps that's one reason we haven't noticed any WiFi problem.

 

[Ravynmagi]

There are MANY reports all over the web of extremely poor wireless reception and frequent disconnects with 6.0.1. click me

And 6.0.2 (which was supposed to fix the wireless issues but didn't) caused battery life to drop to well below 1/2 of what it was previously for quite a few people on many different devices. click me too

It doesn't happen to everyone, of course, but the fact that it's very difficult to roll back the IOS version makes her hesitant to take the chance.

I don't know how wide spread these issues you read about are. But I'm thinking that there are a LOT of iPads sold and it's possible just the sheer volume of iPads out there, it could make rather obscure issues sound bigger than they really are. Maybe.

 

[Mopetar]

Google has their own maps app out for iOS now, so there isn't a maps issue. As far as the other problems go, just download the update. The odds that you actually have a problem are petty slim. If you actually do have a problem, take it to an Apple store and they'll probably take care of you.

Would be best to at least do a basic benchmark though. When I got an iPad 3, at first I swore that the battery life seemed a lot worse compared to my first gen iPad, but after actually doing a basic test and measuring my battery life, it was nowhere near as bad as I thought.

So just charge the device to full, set the screen to some brightness level and see how much battery you have after a few hours of video playback.

 

[Tsavo]

No problems with my 2/3 and the latest updates.

 

[Eug]

Google has their own maps app out for iOS now

Not for the iPad.

 

[secretanchitman]

updated my parents ipad 2 from 5.1.1 to 6.1. no issues to report (and the ipad is jailbroken as well). great performance, great battery life, and no wifi issues as far as i can see.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

Honestly, every major iOS update makes it slower on older hardware. I wouldn't put iOS 6 on anything older than iPhone 4S or iPad 3 unless you are sure that you can either revert or have tried already or don't mind upgrading if it becomes too slow.

 

[Tsavo]

Honestly, every major iOS update makes it slower on older hardware. I wouldn't put iOS 6 on anything older than iPhone 4S or iPad 3 unless you are sure that you can either revert or have tried already or don't mind upgrading if it becomes too slow.

Not really. iOS 5.x was stuttery in certain areas on my 2. 6.x made it lots smoother.

 

[Super56K]

Honestly, every major iOS update makes it slower on older hardware. I wouldn't put iOS 6 on anything older than iPhone 4S or iPad 3 unless you are sure that you can either revert or have tried already or don't mind upgrading if it becomes too slow.

An iPad 2 is pretty much a 4S specwise (slightly higher resolution, 200mhz cpu bump) so there's no reason to be leery of upgrading to iOS 6.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

I had a ipad2 and it sucked bad with ios 5.1 or whateva. 4s was nice and smooth.

 

[dagamer34]

An iPad 2 is pretty much a 4S specwise (slightly higher resolution, 200mhz cpu bump) so there's no reason to be leery of upgrading to iOS 6.

An iPad 2 is an iPad mini in every way except for screen size and cameras.

 

[Mopetar]

Not for the iPad.

Wasn't aware of that. I've never really used the maps app on my iPad so I never bothered to see if I could get the Google maps app when it came out. However, you can still run iPhone apps on the iPad, so it's not as though you can't download it at all.

Perhaps Google will eventually release a universal app.

An iPad 2 is an iPad mini in every way except for screen size and cameras.

There are probably all kinds of hardware differences that could result in strange problems. Because Apple sells so many units they likely source parts from multiple different manufacturers. There's always a chance that for some reason, an arbitrary component from some manufacturer has some weird problem with an update and misbehaves. That's probably why you see issues like this crop up form time to time.